


Uncomfortable Truths

by firefright



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Denial, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 11:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14768864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: The last thing Slade remembers is fighting on a rooftop with Nightwing. Now, waking up in unfamiliar surroundings with no clear memory of what happened after that, he's faced with a Dick who is clearly hiding something, and no matter how hard the kid may push for him to do otherwise, he just can't let the matter go until he knows the truth.





	Uncomfortable Truths

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! This story was originally conceived for the 'sex pollen' prompt of the 2017 SladeRobin week back in October, but I was unable to get it completed in time. Extra warning not in the tags for Slade being something of a jerk even when he means well (I'm sure I don't need to say anything further on that topic) and me calling out canon once again for its poor handling of the Tarantula situation.
> 
> Enjoy!

Slade wakes up slowly, which is in itself a cause for concern.

Normally, he snaps awake, instantly aware of both his surroundings and his body. He’s a soldier at his core, after all, and he’s honed that instinct since he was sixteen. So when he wakes slow, Slade knows it usually means one of two things: either he’s been drugged, or he’s been hurt.

Given how heavy his head is currently swimming, he’s going to guess it’s the former on this occasion.

Gritting his teeth against the feeling, he opens his eyes and glares up at the unshaded light bulb hanging over his head. That’s certainly not doing him any favours.

The rest of the room he finds himself in is plain, nondescript. The usual boring decor of a motel, or rarely used safehouse. Plain magnolia walls, pine furniture and a blocky TV that looks like it hasn’t been updated since the late nineties. Slade is pretty sure he can smell potpourri in the air, irritating against his sensitive nose and pounding headache. Most annoyingly of all, he can’t remember how it is he actually came to be here.

Lucky for him, though, there’s a prime candidate for explanation sitting right next to the bed he’s currently lying on.

“Kid,” Slade says, before wincing at the sound of his own voice. Hoarse, dry. Like he’s been talking or screaming for hours on end. “Nightwing, wake up.”

There’s no reply from the sleeping superhero. Dick Grayson is currently curled up like a contortionist in an extremely uncomfortable looking armchair, arms pillowing his head with one leg tucked up underneath him and the other bent in against his chest. He’s in uniform, which is unsurprising, but missing his gloves, boots and — most importantly — his mask. It’s absence always makes him look a little younger than he actually is, particularly with all the usual staunch, do-gooder attitude he wears wiped off his face by sleep. 

Slade grimaces, then closes his eyes for a moment to brace himself before trying to sit up. Only he doesn’t even make it halfway before something stops him.

A heavy clink of metal clues him into the fact that he’s tied to the bed, as does the tight sensation around his wrists and ankles. Slade twists his head, eye narrowing as he spies the heavy duty metal cuffs (and even heavier chains) binding his arms and legs to the posts at each corner.

_What the hell?!_

That does it, now he really is pissed.

“Grayson!” Slade calls again, forcing his voice louder. His limbs feel like jello, too shaky for him to try and bring his full strength to bear just yet. “God damn it, kid, open your eyes!”

The increased volume does the trick. Like a fish thrown out of water, Dick’s body jerks violently. He snaps awake, and for a second, it looks like he’s about to tumble out of the chair and onto floor as well, only to regain his balance just in time as he catches onto the cause for his disturbance.

“S-Slade?” The kid mumbles, stuttering curiously. Now that Dick’s lifted his head, Slade can make out the dark ink stain of a gigantic bruise running down the previously concealed side of his face. “You’re awake?”

“What do you think?” He growls, trying to remember if they were fighting before this. He thinks that they were. He’d come to Gotham to fulfill a contract, after all. Some wannabe mob boss who’d ticked off the wrong supervillain. And as was usually the case when a job brought him to this ugly city, a Bat had soon managed to stick their nose into Slade’s business. 

Generally, he minds it less when it’s Dick, but in this case he must’ve been particularly angry with him. Why else would he have marked the kid up so badly?

Dick unfolds himself from the chair. Slowly, stiffly, like he’s hiding more injuries underneath the suit he’s still wearing. There’s a rabbitlike quality to his body language that’s unfamiliar to Slade; nervous and twitching. Even back when he was a boy in eye-searing colours, he’s never seen Dick act that way around him before. “I… I didn’t expect you to wake up so soon.”

“Evidently.” Slade grimaces, tugging again at the chains. They rattle noisily against the bed frame. “You going to explain to me what’s going on with the amateur bondage setup here, or am I just going to have to guess?”

Dick flinches, chewing his lip, which is already sore and reddened. “You… don’t remember?”

“If I did, would I be asking you?”

This time he twitches, looking down and to the side like the idea of meeting Slade’s gaze is too painful for him. “Right. You’re right. Sorry.”

“Kid,” Slade says pointedly, when Dick still makes no move to either explain or untie him.

It doesn’t do any good, as all Dick does is take a deep shuddering breath and reach up to wipe his hands over his face. The motion gives Slade a brief glimpse of the kid’s wrists as the sleeves of his suit pull back a little, and he’s startled to see a ring of black and purple bruises marking the skin there as well. Like someone had held him down, _violently_.

Nevermind being angry, now he’s actually starting to feel a little worried about whatever it is that’s going on here.

“Dick,” Slade tries again, gentling his tone this time and purposefully using the kid’s name, “I need you to get it together and tell me what I’m doing here. _Now._ Before I start getting angry.”

But even with those measures in place, Dick still flinches back before nodding. “You’re right. You’re right, I’m sorry.” he apologises again, “I just…” Slade watches as he breathes in deeply, obviously trying to steady himself for the conversation ahead. “Okay,” Dick eventually mumbles, lifting his head up to finally meet his gaze, “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

Slade concentrates, pushing through the haze at the front of his mind to the memory of last night. He remembers sighting his target. The whistle of wind past his ears as he peered along the barrel of his rifle, waiting for the perfect moment to take the shot. Then the impact of another body against his. The gun falling to the street below, and his own irritation as he turned round to face the grinning black and blue shadow standing in his way.

“You and me, fighting. You got in the way of my shot.”

“Yeah, ‘Lucky’ Lucy Herman. Midline crook, and not actually that lucky. She got on the wrong side of the Penguin. He hired you to take her out.”

“Not telling me anything I don’t already know, kid.”

Dick’s lips turn up in a humourless smile. “My goal was to distract you, keep you at a distance while Robin got her into police custody. It worked, and let’s just say you were less than happy when you found that out.”

Slade frowns. He can remember that part too now; the rising anger when it became clear the target had been moved out of bounds, even if he did manage to get rid of Nightwing and go back to deal with her. “And? If that’s the case and you beat me, why am I tied up wherever the hell this is and not in a jail cell?”

“I didn’t—” Dick cuts himself off, looking down again. His foot beats a nervous tap against the floor. “That’s not exactly what happened.”

“Then explain what did.” Slade tells him, rapidly losing patience again as his headache worsens.

“You chased me. It was actually kind of fun at first, running across the city,” Dick shakes his head, hair falling across his face. He reaches up to tuck it back behind his ears, “Until we accidentally landed in one of Poison Ivy’s gardens, that is.”

“Poison Ivy?” Slade repeats, incredulously.

He knows of her, of course he does. No professional comes to Gotham City without researching its resident rogues. It’s only practical if you want to come out alive from the crime capital of the world to understand who controls what and where. But he’s never actually met her before, always preferring to deal with the more business-minded criminals like Penguin instead, rather than the environmentally crazed freaks.

Dick nods in confirmation. “Turns out she’d set up shop in one of the old warehouses along the docks. Made it into some kind of hothouse for her plants; completely invisible to any kind of scanners from the outside, of course, else we would have picked up on it weeks ago. It was like falling into a rainforest when we went through the window. Total accident, not that she was willing to let me explain that.” He swallows thickly, “She attacked. Threw a bunch of spores at us. I was able to get my gas mask on in time. But you...”

“I have a mask.” Slade says suspiciously. Dick winces.

“You, uh… lost it during our fight.”

The pieces are starting to come together, and Slade doesn’t like the picture they’re painting one bit. “Lost it?”

Dick eyes dart away from him. “My fault. Sorry.”

“Kid,” Slade says, forcing himself to move on from that to the more pressing point, “What did those spores do? Why can’t I remember anything?”

Dick’s body language shifts, becoming even more insular. “It’s Poison Ivy, Slade,” he says bitterly, “What do you think they did?” Dick’s hands are shaking, and that’s when clarity hits Slade with all the force of a bullet train.

The bruise on his faces, matching the ones on his wrists. His attitude, the wideness of his eyes in addition to the paleness of his skin.

_Tell me I didn’t…_

“You need water. It’ll help make sure the last of the spores’ effects are flushed from your system.” Dick says, after a moment of watching him have his epiphany. “I’ll go get you some.”

“Kid, wait. I need to—”

But Dick is gone in a second, leaving Slade alone to entertain his terrible thoughts.

The kid’s suit still looks intact, as is his own. That has to mean something, right? Slade shifts his body experimentally, testing for soreness, stickiness. Anything untoward. His head is still a little fuzzy, but he can’t feel anything that immediately strikes him as wrong. Slade hopes that all that evidence put together means nothing happened, but he can’t be sure. Not with the huge blank spot looming up in his memory.

It takes Dick five minutes to come back with the water. Far longer than it should have. Slade clenches his fists tight enough for his nails to cut into his palms while he waits, deliberately fighting the urge to break his way out of the chains now. He can’t, not until he knows for sure what he may or may not have done in the time prior.

Dick looks more composed now, at least. Getting himself to that state is what Slade expects took up the majority of the minutes he’s been gone. 

Not exactly a reassuring sign.

“Dick...” Slade says as Dick unscrews the cap on the bottle and kneels beside him, bringing it to his lips, “ _Kid_ , what did I do?”

“Drink, Slade.” Dick shakes his head, a small tremor running through his hands before he steadies them again.

Deciding to cooperate for the his sake, and mindful of his own headache making matters worse, Slade for once shuts up and does as he’s told. It takes less than a minute for him to drain the entire bottle, and he quickly finds that the kid was right about one thing, as soon as the water hits his stomach he begins to feel better. Physically, at any rate.

“Okay,” Dick sighs as he sets the empty bottle aside, “We’ll give it another thirty minutes, then I’ll take the cuffs off. Usually when it’s one of us it can take up to twelve hours for the effects to wear off completely without an antidote, but I guess with your metabolism it works faster for you.” He manages a bracing smile, but Slade doesn’t return it.

“How long has it been so far?”

Dick glances up at a clock on the wall, “About… five hours? Yeah, five hours.”

Five hours. Slade grimaces, that’s actually an unusually long time for any chemical to have to work through his system. He has to give it to Ivy, she makes some potent drugs.

Maybe he’ll tell her that later, right before he rips her spine out through her neck for doing this to him.

He doesn’t want to ask again, but the fact remains that he has to know. “Kid,” Slade says seriously, “You still haven’t answered my question. What happened after I was dosed?”

“Nothing.” Dick answers, a little too quickly to be believed. “Nothing you have to worry about.”

“Did I hurt you?”

The question stalls whatever else he was about to say next. Dick looks down, dark hair falling across his face like a shroud. Slade can read the tense line across his bowed shoulders like an open book. “No.”

“Bullshit.”

“Slade—”

“Where did those bruises come from?” It would be kinder to give in to Dick’s avoidance. To let him have his denial and whatever terrible thing happened go. But Slade has never been a kind man, and certainly not one for covering up ugly truths — even his own. “Not the one on your face. The ones on your wrists.”

Dick eyes shoot down to his arms, widening as he realises he’s been caught out. Reflexively, he tugs the sleeves of his suit back down, but it’s far too late to try and hide them now. 

“Damn it,” he mutters, “Damn it, damn it.”

“Kid.”

Dick leans back away from the bed. Slade watches him take in one deep breath, then two, obviously steeling himself for what’s ahead. “It’s not what you think. It… it didn’t go that far.”

Maybe not as far as it could have gone, that’s true, but the fact anything happened at all is unforgivable. Slade clenches his fists, feeling the cool strain of metal digging into his flesh. “Tell me.”

“After she dosed you...” Dick’s hands tremble around each other. “I realised what had happened pretty quickly, and I knew I had to get out of the warehouse before the situation could get any worse — there’s no way I could fight Ivy and you at the same time. But when I ran you came straight after me. I made it a few rooftops away before you caught up… but…”

“But I did.” Slade fills in for him, gritting his teeth.

“The bruises happened when you got my… my gloves off.” Dick gulps, biting his lip, “I managed to get a hand free, though, when you went to…” he trails off for a moment, like the words are too hard for him to bear. Slade doesn’t blame him one bit for the way he skips over them to what happened next. “It took three of my sedative darts to take you down. I was scared I’d overestimated your tolerance at first — that it would be too much. That it might kill you. But… that’s it, Slade. That’s all that happened. You chased me, pinned me down, then I managed to knock you out and drag you back here. That’s all.”

“Jesus, kid...” 

He says it like the fact that Slade didn’t actually get to the point of raping him makes it better. Like the fact he was in the position to try at all isn’t bad enough.

“It’s not your fault,” Dick replies at once, completely misinterpreting his horror. The words sound hollow and flat; no comfort at all to Slade in his current state.

“I’ll kill her.” he growls aloud.

“No,” Dick says stolidly, “You won’t.”

Slade narrows his eye in a glare. It’s not surprising, but the idea of Dick getting in the way of him enacting vengeance for this of all things still makes rage burn hot in his gut. “You going to stop me?”

“If I have to.”

“She doesn’t deserve your compassion, kid.”

“Tell me how many do.” he says, in a surprisingly open moment of bitterness. Dick shakes his head, “It doesn’t matter, Slade; I don’t kill, and I don’t stand by and let others kill on my behalf either.”

“Who said anything about it being on your behalf?” Slade bunches his muscles, pulling at the chains, but though the metal creaks, it doesn’t give. Not yet.

“Because I’m not so stupid as to not realise that you wouldn’t be half as pissed about her making you lose your control if it hadn’t caused you to almost hurt me as well.” Dick bites back, showing a little spine again at last. His assessment is disconcertingly accurate, but that doesn’t mean Slade has to acknowledge it.

“Don’t overestimate your importance, boy.”

“Oh right, I’m sorry. This is the point of the conversation where you act like you don’t care about anyone or anything other than yourself, isn’t it?” Dick gets back up to his feet finally, but only to retreat to the chair again. Slade narrows his eyes as he watches Dick fold himself into it, collapsing down like a marionette. “I get it, okay? I get why you’re angry, but Ivy was just defending herself. I — _we_ , we’ve all been there before. In Gotham.”

The clunky way Dick phrases that sentence doesn’t pass Slade by. “Then I’ll be doing you all a favour, won’t I? One I won’t even charge you for. Let me up, Grayson.”

Dick shakes his head. “No.”

“Let. Me. Up.”

“ _No._ Not until I’m sure you’re no longer affected, and you’ve promised not to go after Ivy.”

Slade glares harder. “You can’t keep me here forever.”

“I could call the police and let them take you.” Dick glares back.

“And my lawyers would have me out of there in two days. Not a good plan, kid.” He doesn’t know why he’s pointing that out, and regrets the words the instant they’re out of his mouth. Doubtless Dick would have thought of it himself before it ever came to that, but there was no need for Slade to go putting the idea in his head as well. “You can’t stop me; you’ve never been able to.”

Dick’s expression closes off for a moment. “Don’t go after Ivy, Slade.”

“Give me a good reason not to.”

“Maybe because I’m asking you?” With that, the glare is back in the kid’s eyes, twin blue daggers aimed down at Slade’s face.

He growls in frustration. “She doesn’t deserve—”

“Nothing happened, Slade!” Dick explodes suddenly, up on his feet and pacing. He crosses to the opposite side of the room, then back again. “Nothing… nothing happened. Okay?! _Nothing_. So let it go. Please, let’s just… just let it go.”

Slade is so surprised that, for a moment, he can only stare. The burst of emotion and — if he’s not mistaken — anger from Dick is far beyond what he’s used to; it actually manages to take him aback. Trying to get his head around it, Slade shifts, levering himself up onto his elbows as much as he can to say, “You’re acting real dramatic about something you keep insisting is no big deal, kid.”

“Asking you to refrain from killing someone is not dramatic.”

“No, but losing control and lashing out the way you just did is.” he replies, suspiciously.

Dick twitches, clenching his jaw as he looks away from him to the curtain covered window. 

Fine then.

“Okay, Grayson, how about this; you start answering my questions honestly, then maybe I’ll think about not killing Poison Ivy. Deal?”

“Is that really what it’s going to take?” Dick asks him after a few seconds of letting the words sink in, still nothing but tense muscle and restrained emotion.

“Yeah, it is.”

Slade watches him consider the offer. Throwing the pros and cons back and forth in his head, no doubt. Dick’s too smart just to jump for the bait outright, but predictably, he does eventually still sigh in agreement, “You’re a bastard.”

“Don’t pretend you’re surprised. Quid pro quo, kid. Way of the world, you don’t get something for nothing.” It’s a belief — maybe the only one — Slade lives by (as much as he believes in anything). Especially when it gets him what he wants. “Start talking. Did I really hurt you or not?”

Dick chews his lip like it’s the only meal he might get tonight, then reluctantly moves back to the chair to sit down.

“No,” he begins, “You didn’t hurt me. Except for the bruises.” And bruises are nothing to people like them, goes unsaid. He pauses again, and despite his impatience Slade doesn’t try to push him, letting Dick work up to it in his own time. “But what happened... what _almost_ happened, it… Fuck,” he lifts one hand up and tugs at the front of his hair. “It still scared the shit out of me. Reminded me of…” Dick trails off for a moment, then squeezes his eyes shut, “Something I never wanted to think about again. Still don’t, as a matter of fact.”

It’s a heavy handed hint for Slade to let the matter go, but he’s too caught up in what Dick said.

“Kid,” he says slowly, “What do you mean it reminded you of something?”

Dick doesn’t answer him, and Slade has a terrible suspicion. One he can’t resist prying at, the same way a child would pick at a healing wound. Lifting up the scab to see the ugliness underness.

“Dick,” Slade uses his name again, as he always does when he needs something actually important. “Did something like this happen to you before?”

When Dick speaks, his voice is rough, like stone dragged over gravel. “A long time ago. And no,” he smiles bitterly, “You can’t kill that person either, if only because she’s already dead.”

The ‘she’ surprises him. Not because Slade’s one of those idiots out there that believe women can’t commit rape, but simply because of how rare it is to actually hear it. “When?”

“After the gang war in Gotham. She was on our side, mostly.”

There’s so much buried in that answer Slade can’t even begin to unpick it yet. He will later, when he’s alone and with far more resources at his fingertips than he has while strapped to this bed. Did that mean she was a ‘hero’? Or at least pretending at being one. Did the assault happen near the same time she died, or was it a while before?

Does anyone else know about this, he wonders, or is he the first to find out?

“What you almost did to me, it made me think about it for the first time in… God, I don’t know how long,” Dick continues, unprompted. Slade watches the tremble grow in his hands. “And… and I know you weren’t in control of yourself, not like she was. But it still…”

“Kid,” Slade interrupts quietly, “Let me up.”

Dick’s eyes flick to him, wary and unsure.

“Whatever Ivy infected me with, it’s not in my system anymore. You know it, I know it. Let me up.”

For a moment, Slade doesn’t think he’s going to do it, but then Dick drops his gaze and nods, back to chewing his lip once more. “Okay.”

Slade’s careful not to move too soon as Dick unlocks the chains, starting with the ones holding his legs. He still feels woozy from the after-effects of being drugged, off from his usual level of poise, and his limbs are stiff from being held immobile for long hours. But that’s not the reason he chooses to take it slow. No, the reason why belongs entirely to the skittish boy in front of him — though Slade would never admit it.

“Come here,” He says, taking care to broadcast his intention entirely as he reaches up and takes hold of Dick’s wrist. His muscles are as wires pulled taught, but beyond a few opening seconds of resistance he doesn’t fight the pull as Slade tugs him down onto the bed and in against his side.

It might seem counterintuitive to most to push comfort on someone suffering the kind of PTSD-related panic attack that Dick is through physical contact, but Slade knows him better than that. Better than Dick would probably like him to, maybe even better than he knows himself in some ways. Body language, movement, touch... they’re the purest forms of speech the kid understands. When they first met, learning to read him was like learning to read the emotions of a dancer; every minute twitch of muscle a novel in itself.

Dick interprets other people the same way, for all the self-proclaimed importance he claims to put on words. He’s always bled a need for physical contact, something Slade has alternately enjoyed and manipulated over the years, depending on his own feelings toward Dick at the time.

With that in mind, he curls his arm around the boy’s waist and leaves it there, waiting as Dick trembles finely in reaction at first, breathing fast in a way that’s close to hyperventilation, then gradually relaxes. A minute later, his head is resting on Slade’s shoulder and they’re pressed as close to each other as they possibly can be. Slade rewards him for the action by putting his hand in Dick’s hair and carefully stroking it.

“I won’t go after Ivy.” he says.

Dick laughs a little, voice hoarser now than ever. “Is that your way of apologising for being an asshole and making me talk about this?”

Slade grunts, which is as much of an admittance as he’s willing to make. It would be a lie for him to say he regrets it; he understands more now why Dick needs him to let this go. It’s not just his refusal to condone killing, but because if Slade pushes him into a battle over Poison Ivy’s life, it will force Dick to keep thinking about what happened. To keep being reminded of that time when it hadn’t just been a drugged up, unintentionally close call, but horrifically _real_.

All right, perhaps he does feel the tiniest bit guilty for making Dick talk. Though not as much as he is angry that the person he really wants to tear the head off of is already dead and long beyond his reach.

Later, Slade will find out who it was. Find out everything he can without having to pull the words from between Dick’s own lips like teeth, even if just to satisfy his own curiosity. There’s always a trail, but for now…

“Just don’t want to put up with you nagging me about it for the rest of my life, that’s all.” Slade deflects, continuing to comb his fingers back through the kid’s hair.

Dick snorts weakly, “One day, you’ll actually learn to say the words ‘I’m sorry’, and I hope I’m there when you do.”

“You and a whole queue of other people.”

He doesn’t laugh, but Slade feels a small twitch run through Dick’s shoulders. The next few minutes are spent in silence, during which Dick breathes slow and deep, and Slade thinks dark thoughts, none of which he knows he should ever voice to him. The kid would rail against every single one, and this moment is already fragile enough given the volatile conversation they just had.

He won’t be surprised if later, once he’s recovered and feeling less immediately vulnerable, Dick gets angry at him all over again for his behaviour, but that’s something he’ll deal with when it comes. For now, he just needs to focus on this moment and offering what little comfort he can.

“It really wasn’t your fault, you know.”

Slade has turned his head so that his chin is resting on top of Dick’s hair, meaning he can’t give him the warning look he wants to without some serious readjustment. “Kid…”

“You won’t ever admit when you’re upset or something hurt you, so I’m telling you now. It wasn’t your fault.”

Slade clenches his jaw where it can’t be seen. “You were the one hurt, not me.”

“You know what I mean, Slade.” Dick sighs at his resistance.

He does, but that doesn’t mean he has to acknowledge it. And maybe somewhere, deep down, Slade does appreciate the intent behind the words, but right now it’s all still too near for him to express anything about tonight’s events but anger. What happened to him is nothing compared to what almost happened to Dick.

What Slade almost did to him.

His arm tightens a little around the boy’s waist, before he reminds himself to breath and loosens it again.

“You should rest.” He says, turning the subject of the conversation outward before he can get worked up once more. Making sure Dick is taken care of is the best distraction Slade has right now.

It’s a sign of how shaken the kid still is that he lets the point go. “I have rested.”

“On that piece of shit?” he glances towards the armchair. “Not likely.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” Dick mumbles.

“It looks something someone pulled out of a hospital waiting room in the seventies.”

“Well, you would know all about the seventies.”

He must be on the road to recovery if he can make age jokes. Slade grunts, saying “Brat.” for the sense of normalcy it brings more than anything else. “Lie down with me.”

Just like before, Slade gives Dick all the time he could need to raise an objection if he wanted to. But no objection comes. Instead, he folds like paper, sinking down onto the mattress beside Slade with his face still pressed in against his shoulder. “You’re not going to leave?” he asks softly.

“Not right now.”

It’s not the full commitment Dick was probably hoping for, but still seems to satisfy him well enough. Slade stares up at the ceiling as he waits for him to settle completely, enjoying the simple warmth of the boy’s body against his own in the meantime. It makes him feel… better, a little, to have him there. Tempers the parts of him that still yearn to go out there and exact vengeance, in hopes that the old practice of an eye for an eye will wipe away all the disgust he has for himself.

Damn it, he hates when Dick is right.

“Slade?”

“What, kid?” He should have drank some more water before doing this, but too late for that now. Slade’s suffered worse than a little dehydration for a few hours.

“I never… I never told anyone else about what happened to me. You can’t—”

“Dick,” Slade cuts him off, “No one will hear a word about it from me. Just like they won’t hear about what happened tonight from either of us. Right?”

“Right.” Dick agrees quietly. “Thank you.”

The last thing Slade thinks Dick should do right now is thank him for any of this, but he doesn’t want to argue with him over it, so keeps his mouth shut. After a while, he finally hears Dick’s breathing slow down in a way that suggests real sleep, rather than him just feigning it, and can’t help but think how ridiculous it is that the boy still trusts him this much. But then, that’s par for the course for Dick. He defies Slade’s own jaded view of the world just by existing, and Slade can admit to himself that as much as he often finds that frustrating, it’s also always been part of what’s made the boy so interesting to him, past the looks and physical ability.

Sighing heavily, Slade keeps his gaze fixed on the ceiling above him. By his calculations, based on the information Dick gave him, there’s still more than a few hours left in the night before dawn arrives, and with everything spinning around in his head right now he already knows he won’t sleep.

Might as well get used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](https://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)


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